


Me the Machine

by kalikoke



Category: Big Hero 6 (2014), Frozen (2013)
Genre: Angst, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 16:00:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4143864
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kalikoke/pseuds/kalikoke
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Do you wanna build a robot?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Me the Machine

# Me the Machine

Big Hero 6/Frozen **Pairing** Tadelsa

Title from [Me the Machine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0lCL2hpRPM), a song by Imogen Heap.

* * *

It was easier to see herself as machine, parsing the outer world as a series of inputs, of signals. Then to translate them into the language of her inner reality, the sanctuary into which she retreated. She lets herself now sink into that inner world, closing off what existed on the Outside.

"Anybody in there?" Tadashi chuckles. "You seem a bit, well, distracted."

Emotions make you vulnerable. Exposed. Left unchecked, they create entropy to unsettle the tenuous order pieced loosely together by restraint. _Don't feel. Control it._

Elsa can't still her hands when she's fumbling with the wires over the breadboard. The digits on the ammeter fluctuate with the shakes of her hands. She stares at the board, trying to will her hands to calm.

"Hey, are you okay?" Tadashi asks.

It was easier to live by a script. Mechanically picking apart what people said, what people did. Just electromagnetic pulses through her circuits to be processed by specific regions of her brain.

The cursor in the terminal blinks at her.

Eyes, the optical sensors, sending off what existed in the outer world into her brain to be processed. A dance of lights weaved into the patterns that manifest in the symbols that exist only in the mind.

"I'm fine."

Ears, the audio sensors, taking in the oscillations that vibrated in the air, in the hum of the A/C, in the thump of her heart, which now makes itself heard, which demands to be acknowledged.

The flood of stimuli, comprised of the noise of life, of the cacophony of her _own_ thoughts, pushed her further to retreat into the comfort provided by symbols and equations. These, the abstractions that simplified, that compacted what existed Outside into the elegance achieved by the language of science.

"We can take a break, if you want." The vibrato of his voice, quiet and gentle, soothes the pace of her quickening pulse.

Tadashi edges closer to her. His hands hover just over her shoulders, then he pulls back.

There is a boundary between them. Unspoken. Unseen. She looks at him, a sideways smirk forming on her face.

But the glint that always betrayed mischief in her eyes didn't shine now.

Emotions aren't easy to compute. They aren't discrete pieces that can be mungled about in an elegant mathematical model. Or can they...?

_Me, the machine._

_No_ , Anna would say. _Emotions make you human. You're not a robot, Elsa_.

That's what she'd tell her. Anna, ever patient and caring. The one who forgave her even after all those years of closed doors, of boundaries unseen but always acknowledged. Always respected.

_I don't know_ , Elsa would answer. _I sometimes doubt whether I'm even human_.

A knock on a door. Silence behind it.

And now, a phantom hand at her shoulder.

Always the Silence answering in the place of her own voice.

*Conceal, don't feel. *

The procedure that Papa had taught her. It helped when things got too much. It buoyed her when the ocean of expectations in which she barely stayed afloat became too tumultous. It gave her air to breathe when she felt herself begin to drown in the rarefied cloud of self-doubt that enshrouded her from time to time.

_Be the good girl you always have to be._

But the phrases of ghosts do not a substitute make. They are never sufficient in replacing what once was there. Mama and Papa at her side, at Anna's side. A family of four. Not two sisters, the elder barely able to maintain the will to live herself in the storm of grief that followed. In the lightening that struck at her heart and electrified all the fiber of her being. Even now, when things were better (were they?).

Only ghosts remained of their parents, the corporeal destroyed in the crash. There were no survivors.

Maybe now they watch over her and Anna.

She searches deep into the reaches of her memories to retrieve something, anything, to help her now. Anything to lighten the gravity that pushed at her shoulders and pulled her deeper, deeper into the darkness.

"Are you sure?" Tadashi softens his voice. He gestures with his head to her hands which she wrings almost unconsciously.

"I'm _fine_ ," she repeats. It's a loop she can't break out of, forever returning the same tired old statements. "Just thinking."

It's the algorithm that eludes her still even when among friends. The algorithm that makes Anna parse people so easily, that lets her return the right statements to those she encountered.

"Elsa, what's wrong?" Tadashi's eyes catch with her own. "You can tell me anything."

She quickly averts her own gaze from his.

The world in Elsa's mind operated in a systematic fashion. In nature and in computing she could create a beautiful mesh that stringed together what once was mystery, each empirical reality a node on the intricate web that held her knowledge. Why couldn't she discern one in people?

Were it not for the isolation in her teenage years, then maybe it would be part of her own programming. But part of her acknowledges that absent of that experience, she would still be missing the functions that made Anna such a natural with people. It was a set of patterns that for Elsa eluded the grasp of her understanding.

Elsa feels her eyes gather water. It is the flood within she must contain. It is the storm inside her she must prevent from escaping.

Tadashi frowns, but not in frustration. In his face she sees patience and care she doesn't think she deserves. Attention better spent elsewhere.

She's seen this before in Anna. The face of her younger sister who had been so forgiving when all the jagged pieces that jutted from Elsa's soul emerged and nearly pricked Anna. How gentle and comforting Anna had been when it had all come out.

Maybe now, in the presence of the young man whose warmth fights the bitter cold she feels creeping at her, she can let it go.

_Human, after all._


End file.
